Pix dim sum

[duckduck]

I went out Saturday night to check out the dessert dim sum at Pix Patisserie. What a playful event! They made almost their entire pastry menu in miniature (which I love anyway) and served it on a cart wheeled around the dining room and you could pick and choose whatever you wanted. Prices ranged from 2 for $1 to $3 and the entire selection of 15 pieces plus tasting samples of liquer, port and wine ran me $45 total. (There were two of us and we took half of it home for later.) There was something for every taste from light to dense, sweet to tart, fruit, chocolate... all those french terms in pastry books that you wonder what they taste like...they have them all at Pix. It was a visual feast as well with gold leaf dancing with the breeze on top of chocolates in the cooler. The desserts are eye candy the likes of which I have not seen much of in Portland (other than the Pastry Art and Design magazine on my coffee table). The surprise of the evening was their pear rosemary tart. I dislike rosemary but I was surprised at how well the rosemary marries with the chocolate ganache. When you take something I dislike and make me appreciate and enjoy the complexities of flavor, to steal a phrase from Tony Bourdain... "You're doing God's work." Pix is an absolute gem and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

[mamster]

Laurie and I were also in Portland and were talking about going to the dessert dim sum, but I had already polished off a sundae and a Pixie bar that day and couldn't imagine more dessert. Glad you enjoyed it, and based on your description we'll definitely go to a future one.

[duckduck]

It was a lot of fun! I'll have to try a Pixie bar next time I go...

[KNorthrup]

They're now advertising a Build Your Own Dessert night. I really need to visit of these days. Although I do sometimes pick up items at Pastaworks.

[duckduck]

They seem to do that on occasion. It's sounds fun I just wish they gave a little more notice than e-mails of "Hey, guess what we're doing tonight?"

[ExtraMSG]

I'm way behind on my blog, but finally put up my report on the Division/Clinton street fair.

The coolest (literally and figuratively) thing there was the Pix Ice Cream Social. Wow! Definitely check out my pics. There's a link to the photo albums in this link to the full entry: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?name=N...=article&sid=20

Here's what I wrote in my blog, though, about the ice cream social:

Pix celebrated their first annual ice cream social as part of the fair. What a prescient choice. It was in the 90s and all the little shops were selling out of water. Pix was jammed when I showed up. Cheryl and the others behind the counter wore malt shop hats and aprons.

The top two shelves of the dessert case was filled with intriguingly named items just for the social: Baked Alaska, The Foghorn, Da Ice Cream Bombe!, Bozo the Clown. The Foghorn was massive -- 22 scoops of ice cream stuffed into half a watermelon for $35. Bozo was a scoop of ice cream on a plate with a sugar cone sticking up like a hat. Berries formed his eyes and nose. There was a root beer float, but also a beer float with Young's double chocolate stout and mocha ice cream.

There were also choices of several flavors of house-made ice creams. I chose four: lavendar with candied mandarin, port fig and goat cheese, basil, and habenero. All four were very good. My favorite was the habenero, which was a chocolate ice cream with candied chiles. The chiles were both sweet and spicy and matched the chocolate perfectly. My other favorite was the lavendar. Lavendar is such a nice and interesting floral flavor. The candied orange added a nice, matching sweetness. The quality of all the ice creams was excellent. The port fig and goat cheese was the weakest of the four, the goat cheese in chunks unfortunately. It would have been better as a uniform flavor punctuated by the port figs.

The ice cream social was a testament to how great Pix is. If this was a regular ice cream shop, they might very well be the best one in town. Maybe Cheryl needs to open a second store.

[duckduck]

Ok...yum! I would have liked to tried the chocolate chili ice cream. Way cool.